When pubs and restaurants closed due to COVID-19, Newcastle wine importer and wholesaler Decante This lost 90 per cent of its business overnight.
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"What remains has slowed to a trickle," founder and self-described chief wine officer Leigh Dryden says.
"As we have a heavy skew towards restaurants, small bars and hotels, with their closure our sales channel simply stopped."
Online sales had never played a major part in the Decante This model, driven as it was by personal and in-person customer service, but that would have to change.
"With a strong but limited offering we knew we were never going to replace our lost sales by ourselves," he says.
"So much of our wine and Champagne is a hand sell and not something that can be readily articulated online without personal engagement and experience tasting. We had to change and see how we could articulate this better. Combining our portfolio with other like-minded makers and producers was the perfect way to do this, to offer choice and build a better connection with local wine makers who are in the same situation as us. The pivot for us is collaboration and co-operation, not competition."
Dryden started talking to friends Daniel Briant (The Funky Drop) and sommelier Stephane Pommier (SOM Australia) about a new local offering. Something customer-focused and a little different that drew on each of their strengths. Using The Funky Drop as an online platform, they decided to sell and home deliver curated, customised and menu-matched wine boxes to the public.
"It's not about any one individual, it's about a group of professionals with their own skills coming together and creating this concept: the experience of going out to a restaurant but in the comfort of your own home," Pommier, whose business was also suffering due to COVID-19, explains.
Dryden says the trio reached out to "a few of our good mates" to see if they would collaborate on the project. Elbourne Wines, Dirt Candy, Hart and Hunter, M& J Becker Wines, Grandis, Toppers Mountain, Karu Distillery, Domaines Albert Bichot, Domaine Vadin-Plateau and SOM Australia all said yes.
"We are offering wine lovers several choices ranging from curated wine packs based on style or preference, through to fun Blind Discovery Packs and even single bottle purchases if wine lovers want to take a deeper dive into their favourites," Dryden says.
"We act as a négociant, I suppose, or more likely a provedore. Rather than each of us trying to navigate this as individuals we have joined forces to offer a broader choice of high quality wines. We have a fully integrated local delivery service and 24/7 real-time service. We have also combined with a number of local restaurants who are clients of ours to provide that same curated wine experience with their takeaway meals."
Restaurant Mason, Nagisa Japanese Restaurant and Coal River & Co are all on board. Their new takeaway menus are matched to a curated selection of wines that "make the wines and the food all work together in harmony".
"Stephane, the former head sommelier at Muse, has done the lion's share on this but we all contribute," Dryden says.
Through SOM Australia Pommier sources French wine "at an affordable price and supports restaurants, bars and venues by creating the perfect wine list according to their style of cuisine". He also makes his own wine and conducts wine masterclasses for private or corporate groups.
"Take vegetable gyoza-pan fried cabbage, quinoa, kale, tofu dumpling and soy vinegar sauce. To me it is obvious a Chardonnay is going to be the hero with this delicious dish, but not every Chardonnay would work."
- Stephane Pommier
"Leigh, Daniel and I started talking about how, in this new age of shopping and consuming, we could make our local businesses come together in just one click," Pommier explains.
"At Funky Drop we have personally curated packs of wine to complement each restaurant's menu so you can order with ease knowing that your wine and food will be paired perfectly.
"My role in this project is to connect the food to the wine. I have studied the menus dish by dish and spoken to the chef of each restaurant collaborating with us in this new venture. With the selection of wine we have, I have tried to find the perfect harmony where the customer can relax behind the full experience we are providing and drink and eat without any effort required."
Working with Nagisa meant Pommier had to "reopen a few Japanese cookbooks to get my head around a few of the condiments they are using".
"From there I drew a list of grape varieties which could highlight the dishes or simply shine with the flavour.
"I'll give you a typical example of my thought process. Take vegetable gyoza-pan fried cabbage, quinoa, kale, tofu dumpling and soy vinegar sauce. To me it is obvious a Chardonnay is going to be the hero with this delicious dish, but not every Chardonnay would work.
"I think a Chardonnay where the aroma is sitting on unripe stone fruits with a hint of green apple behind it resulting in a feeling of freshness would work. The texture, acidity and minerality should balance in the mid palette and provide the perfect harmony with the weight and texture of the dumpling where the acidity will pick up the saltiness of the soy vinegar sauce and the cabbage, bringing the roundness of the wine and food in the mouth. I don't believe a round, generous, wooded Chardonnay would work as it would be too heavy, almost a sickly feeling, and we would lose the number one in the Nagisa dish which is the dumpling."
